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When you begin
to write copy for any product or service, there are a few things
you have to take into consideration. The first is always your target
audience: who you’ll be writing to. Finding out about the
needs and wants of the audience members, their communication styles,
their lifestyles, and a multitude of other elements are “musts”
before writing one word of copy.

But something
most people neglect is giving due attention to the buying process
as a whole and where your target audience is within that process.
Understanding this can, oftentimes, make or break the success of
your copy.

When AEwebworks
(an online, dating-site software developer) approached me about
rewriting their website copy, it became immediately apparent that
their copy could benefit from paying some due diligence to the buying
processes of their customers.

The
Problems

My primary concerns
with the copywriting on this site included the lack of synergy within
the copy, the use of testimonials, the lack of focus on the target
customer’s buying process, and the inability for the copy
to support the search engine goals of AEwebworks. In its present
state, the copy contained few mentions of keyphrases.

When I first
read the copy, it felt as though I was being pitched to from all
sides. The headline spoke to someone thinking of entering the online
dating site industry. The body copy did not support that headline;
rather it spoke to someone who had already made the decision to
launch or improve a dating site.

The use of testimonials
at the bottom of the home page posed a challenge for two reasons.
The first was the sheer location. The design of the site was such
that it appeared nothing fell “below the fold” (what
was first seen when the home page loaded onto a browser). The second
challenge was that many of the testimonials were from people asking
questions or stating they were considering trying the dating software…
not actual customers attesting to the benefits they’d personally
experienced.

In addition,
while the information included in the body copy was good, the information
given on the home page needed to outline why AEwebworks was better
than the competition. In its present state, it did not. That meant
finding those aspects of buying dating software that were most important
to the customer and highlighting them within the copy.

Lastly, I needed
to focus the home page copy on only two or three keyphrases and
increase keyword saturation for those phrases. This also meant creating
a copy strategy that would allow me to use the keyphrases effectively
without making the text sound stiff.

The
Solution

As always, I
started the project by gaining a good understanding of who the target
customers were, what they wanted, their fears, their likes, their
dislikes, and anything else I could discover. After a good bit of
research, and after reading the completed target audience analysis
from AEwebworks, I felt I had a good understanding of those I would
be writing to.

In order to
combat the lack of synergy within the copy and the lack of focus
on the target customer’s buying process, I created a copywriting
plan. From my research I found that installation, upgrade policies,
and support were the three most common gripes buyers had about dating
software. I decided to make overcoming those obstacles the focal
point of the copy instead of the actual features and benefits.

That may sound
like an odd choice, but that’s where recognition of the buying
process comes in. Considering that the majority of visitors to the
site had already made the decision to launch a new site or had chosen
to upgrade an existing site, they were already well versed in the
features of dating-site software and their associated benefits.
Yes… the benefits did need to be mentioned; however, other
issues proved to be more pressing to this particular group of customers.

The use of testimonials
on the home page was easily corrected by simply deleting the ones
that did not directly apply to actual users of the software. I chose
two for use within the copy and suggested that, as AEwebworks gets
more testimonials, they create an entire page that visitors can
read.

That left me
with overcoming the inability of the current copy to support the
search engine goals of the site. I suggested AEwebworks review their
keyword choices to be sure they were targeting the ones most likely
to bring in qualified customers. After a review, they provided me
with a revised list to choose from.

I selected three
keyphrases for each page in order to allow an adequate level of
both keyword saturation and natural language. For the home page,
the terms “dating software,” “online dating software,”
and “dating script” were used.

After all the
hoopla with Google, AEwebworks was in foul shape as far as search
engine rankings were concerned. I had to pay particular attention
to creating copy that impressed the search engines AND their site
visitors in order to help them regain ground with their positioning
and sales efforts.

The plan was
in place. Now “all” I had to do was write the copy.
In part two of this series, you’ll get all the details on
how I turned “OK” into “Wow!”